Lingering memories of summer

Today was one of those rare New England November days when the Sun shone brightly, the temperature climbed into the 60s, the air felt soft and welcoming.

Since it also was our day to care for Devon, our 2-year-old granddaughter, we followed our outdoor routine: Walk Murphy, our golden, on the conservation land trail; stop by Wilson Farms to see the farm animals and shop for produce, and, in the afternoon, head to the playground. We finished the day with a flourish and sore backs -- filling another 30 bags with leaves after Devon dove in up to her neck in the pile beneath the big Maple.

You could say Devon was a surprise when she came along. What we're finding though is that

grandparenting has all the joy and none of the edge of parenting. The worries are gone. The pressure to discipline has evaporated. The drive to help your kids excel is muted. Only the moment matters.

With Devon, there are many such moments. She's a character. The other day she accompanied her mom to buy a new brassiere at the mall. Before mom could open her mouth, Devon walked up to the sales clerk and announced, "I want to get some boobs."

Today, sitting in her car seat on the way to the conservation land, she announced.

"I've got on pucker paint," Kathy's phrase for lipstick.

"What kind?" I asked.

"Grape." And then, after a pause, "I love pucker paint."

I laughed loudly, apparently embarrassing her. "Go away Ada," Devon said (she always calls me Ada or da, he names, never grandpa).

Later, as we pulled into the parking lot at Wilson Farm, to see the animals, Devon said something we couldn't quite make out.

"The pig is pretty?" Kathy asked.

"No way," came her voice from the back seat.

It turns out that she was saying the (coy) fish are pretty. As for the pig, maybe Devon could share some of that grape pucker paint next time we go.

On the other hand, you can put lipstick on a pig and .... oh, never mind.

Remembering the day the earth shook

It was 14 seconds I’ll never forget.

Twenty years ago, on Oct. 17, 1989, I was sitting at the San Jose Mercury News city desk, revved up to coordinate the news coverage of Game 3 of the Bay Area World Series between the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants. As pre-game coverage clicked on at 5 p.m. our reporters were all in place. Four minutes later the TV went dead and newsroom’s concrete floor rippled like a ship’s wake.

We all dove. As I lay beneath my desk, legs protruding, I wondered whether the newsroom ceiling would collapse. The room rumbled, but I heard just one voice, that of another assistant city editor.

“Oh my God,” she said softly.

And then the wave stopped.

That night and in the months that followed, the staff at the San Jose Mercury News was at its best. The newspaper had had the foresight in the earthquake-prone San Francisco Bay Area to have a back-up generator. So we published the next morning. Reporters worked deep into the night, even as they worried about families unable to call in or homes sitting near the fault lines everyone in that part of the world can map in their mind. Darkness soon fell and on the blackened streets of San Francisco, fires burned. The Cypress Viaduct in Oakland had collapsed, killing dozens (the count kept changing). We began getting patchwork reports of devastation in the mountainous communities to the south of San Jose.

Late that night, the editors huddled around the news desk to debate the front page headline. They considered “The Big One,” then wisely discarded it. This quake, reported at 7.0 on the Richter Scale, didn’t approach the magnitude of the one that devastated San Francisco in 1906. I can’t recall what headline we actually did use. I can’t imagine readers much cared.

For weeks we worked 60, 70 and 80 hours. When the walls swayed – and they did often at first – we weren’t sure whether we were feeling aftershocks or fatigue signals from our overworked brains. First came the dramatic stories about the dead, the damage and the survivors, heroic rescues, odd and sometimes calamitous coincidences. Then came the long haul: rebuilding devastated homes and businesses, sorting through insurance claims and fraud, reviewing weaknesses in building structures, roadways and bridges.

Kathy and I seriously considered moving back East. For a half year I wouldn’t drive the long bridge expanse across the San Francisco Bay. For awhile, I didn’t stop beneath bridges either. But we stayed. At year’s end, the city desk staff turned from breaking news to a project “We Are Not Prepared,” to identify and push for changes in safety and engineering standards and emergency management systems.

Four month later our city desk staff won a Pulitzer for general news reporting. After the announcement, many of us took our soaking in the moat surrounding the paper as a badge of honor.

My family lived nearly five more years in the Bay Area. I got to participate in other big stories and projects. But none made me prouder to be in the news business or that particular news room than the months that followed the earthquake.

The paper’s Pulitzer made for some pretty gaudy icing, but that’s not why. Looking back on that day and the months that followed, what leaves me nostalgic is that the earthquake allowed us to help our neighbors and communities. It also forged a community in a once-proud newsroom that by all accounts today is a mere shell of itself. It wasn’t something any of us merely covered. It is something we lived and shared.

When faux news obscures the real thing

This post appeared first at http://TrueSlant.com, where I am keeping an active blog. See other recent writing there.

10/16/09

Democrats are "increasingly confident" they'll have the votes to pass health care legislation, my morning Boston Globe reports. That's why, as a proponent of reform, I'm nervous. As health care heads down the stretch, I'm bracing for the next big diversion, watching for how the media respond.

The health insurance industry tried to light a rocket last week when, at the 11th hour before the Senate Finance Committee vote on Sen. Max Baucus' proposal, it released a report warning the plan would send family premiums through the roof. That diversion fizzled, perhaps because its timing was so evidently cynical.

But perhaps it fizzled for another reason: It wasn't whacko enough. If there's one thing yet another summer of silly stories reminded us it's that American conspiracy theorists like their faux news diversions to be really faux -- and that cable news knows it well. That's part of why death panels were such a hit for awhile, along with the birther movement that preceded it. Those charges were loony enough charges to really get some traction on TV.

Meanwhile, anyone trying to get a firm grip on the health care debate has struggled to break through the 24-7 noise. As recently as late last month a New York Times/CBS News poll found a majority of those polled remained confused about health care. I'll bet that hasn't changed much.

Granted. Health care reform is complicated. And the multiple bills flying around make it more so. But the news media can't take a free pass here.

Hours of over-the-top coverage of the off-the-wall inevitably divert attention from real issues. And that, I'm quite sure, is precisely what opponents on the right still want. By raising false charges, they often succeed in coaxing a media fearful of seeming biased, eager to boost ratings, or both, to obscure the real debate.

This isn't an issue of ideology. If Democrats were better at tossing around mean-spirited, specious attacks they, too, might seize the day. Obama, for his part, could counter this trend by rapidly counter-attacking each attack and hammering the message he began to sharpen in his speech to Congress.

But even if Democratic tentativeness has made matters worse, the media's job is to cover more than just what's lobbed at them. News coverage involves choice every day. And in a profit-driven 24-7 news environment, news executives often choose with the knowledge that scaring people sells almost as well as sex. (Just witness this week's saga of the missing boy and the drifting helium balloon.)

Though sexy and scary stories sell, however, they also distract from a core mission of news – to inform, to expose the public to an intelligent range of views, to put a variety of rational options before it.

"Fair and balanced” news meant something different before Fox News co-opted the slogan. To be fair, I was taught 35 years ago, a reporter should check his own biases and gather enough facts to glean what truth (with a small t) they appear to point toward. The weight of evidence would dictate the relative balance of viewpoints, not some formulaic "he said, she said" equation. What gets covered and how it gets covered in other words, should be proportionate to the evidence, not to who shouts the loudest.

Perhaps "no drama" Obama is right. Perhaps the shouters, lacking substance, eventually run out of steam. I hope so.

Because when the news becomes merely noise it makes the already difficult task of governing almost impossible.

That is why I'm bracing for the next big diversion, the next effort to stop health care reform by peddling nonsense. Stories of lost kids and balloons can only last so long. And the mavens of 24-7 news are always on the lookout for raw meat.

10/16/09

Democrats are "increasingly confident" they'll have the votes to pass health care legislation, my morning Boston Globe reports. That's why, as a proponent of reform, I'm nervous. As health care heads down the stretch, I'm bracing for the next big diversion, watching for how the media respond.

The health insurance industry tried to light a rocket last week when, at the 11th hour before the Senate Finance Committee vote on Sen. Max Baucus' proposal, it released a report warning the plan would send family premiums through the roof. That diversion fizzled, perhaps because its timing was so evidently cynical.

But perhaps it fizzled for another reason: It wasn't whacko enough. If there's one thing yet another summer of silly stories reminded us it's that American conspiracy theorists like their faux news diversions to be really faux -- and that cable news knows it well. That's part of why death panels were such a hit for awhile, along with the birther movement that preceded it. Those charges were loony enough charges to really get some traction on TV.

Meanwhile, anyone trying to get a firm grip on the health care debate has struggled to break through the 24-7 noise. As recently as late last month a New York Times/CBS News poll found a majority of those polled remained confused about health care. I'll bet that hasn't changed much.

Granted. Health care reform is complicated. And the multiple bills flying around make it more so. But the news media can't take a free pass here.

Hours of over-the-top coverage of the off-the-wall inevitably divert attention from real issues. And that, I'm quite sure, is precisely what opponents on the right still want. By raising false charges, they often succeed in coaxing a media fearful of seeming biased, eager to boost ratings, or both, to obscure the real debate.

This isn't an issue of ideology. If Democrats were better at tossing around mean-spirited, specious attacks they, too, might seize the day. Obama, for his part, could counter this trend by rapidly counter-attacking each attack and hammering the message he began to sharpen in his speech to Congress.

But even if Democratic tentativeness has made matters worse, the media's job is to cover more than just what's lobbed at them. News coverage involves choice every day. And in a profit-driven 24-7 news environment, news executives often choose with the knowledge that scaring people sells almost as well as sex. (Just witness this week's saga of the missing boy and the drifting helium balloon.)

Though sexy and scary stories sell, however, they also distract from a core mission of news – to inform, to expose the public to an intelligent range of views, to put a variety of rational options before it.

"Fair and balanced” news meant something different before Fox News co-opted the slogan. To be fair, I was taught 35 years ago, a reporter should check his own biases and gather enough facts to glean what truth (with a small t) they appear to point toward. The weight of evidence would dictate the relative balance of viewpoints, not some formulaic "he said, she said" equation. What gets covered and how it gets covered in other words, should be proportionate to the evidence, not to who shouts the loudest.

Perhaps "no drama" Obama is right. Perhaps the shouters, lacking substance, eventually run out of steam. I hope so.

Because when the news becomes merely noise it makes the already difficult task of governing almost impossible.

That is why I'm bracing for the next big diversion, the next effort to stop health care reform by peddling nonsense. Stories of lost kids and balloons can only last so long. And the mavens of 24-7 news are always on the lookout for raw meat.

Come visit my new blog at trueslant.com

I've begun a new blog, called News prints, at trueslant.com. Please stop by. I'll be doing all my blogging there for the foreseeable future so I will no longer be posting to this blog. The link is below.

trueslant.

'Fair & Balanced' Fox sprinkles a bit of racial hatred

It's a tactic card-carrying members of the white right have long used to good effect.

When a black guy says something reasonable about, but critical of, the white establishment, the white right pounces. Makes him out to be uptight or, better yet, anti-white. Deflects the real issues -- whatever they are -- by taking the offense to marginalize the critic.

Only this time the black guy, the one being called a "foreigner" by some and now a racist by others, happens to be our president. And the name callers aren't run-of-the-mill bigots. They are talk-show hosts sometimes posing as journalists.

I'm not just talking about Mr. Republican, Rush Limbaugh.

For starters, add Mr. Anti-Immigration, CNN's Lou Dobbs, who has now jumped on the bandwagon of barely veiled bigots spreading not-so-subtle vitriol about President Obama's mixed-race background through a well-orchestrated campaign to question whether he's even American. They suggest Obama may actually be a citizen of Kenya, thus disqualifying him to lead our country. There's no evidence, mind you. Just lots of noise. (Obama was born in Hawaii, as state officials felt compelled to announce yet again this week as the suspicions of the so-called "birther"movement continue to spill from the right-wing blogosphere into the mainstream press).

Add Glenn Beck, an anchor on the "Fair & Balanced" network-- Fox -- that bastion of even-handed, anti-Democratic propaganda passed off as news.

Right out of the blocks of a 10-minute segment on "Fox and Friends" Tuesday about the Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest, Beck said of our president, "This I think has exposed him as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seeded hatred for white people and the white culture."

And later, "This guy is, I believe, a racist."

Wow. Our president hates white people? He's a foreigner? Sounds like a terrorist to me. And if any crazy down the line takes a shot at him, the seeds will have started with the likes of commentary such as Beck's.

So did anyone on the show challenge Mr. Beck, ask him, for example, whether he had anything resembling evidence for his off-the-wall assertion? Ask him where they could buy drugs good enough to see what he's seeing? Or other germane questions such as, "Wasn't the president's mother white?" Not really. Beck's assault was just another point in the conversation, it seems. A minute or two later, someone on the show did suggest that Obama had plenty of white people around him. That was it.

And Fox executives? They were outraged, right? They apologized for Beck? Reprimanded him for such seemingly baseless accusations against the president? Questioned the tastefulness of his comments? Nah.

The Associated Press reports that Bill Shine, a Fox News senior vice president of programming, told an interviewer that Beck had "expressed a personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel. And as with all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions."

It warms my heart that Fox is standing up for the First Amendment. But I wonder if the network would say the same if one of those commentators did something unthinkable, like praise any aspect of the president's program.

By now anyone who has not spent the last week in a cave know the basic facts behind this.
A Cambridge police sergeant arrests and handcuffs eminent Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. for breaking into his own home in Cambridge when he couldn't get the front door open.
Gates in all likelihood is angry, maybe even belligerent, when police come into his house and start asking questions. The officer who responds, James Crowley, likely doesn't like that but clearly over-reacts in cuffing a guy for being angry in his own house. (Can you imagine how you might feel if cops started asking you what you were doing in your own home?) All charges are dropped the next day.

Enter the president. In answering the last question of a press conference on health care, he acknowledges he doesn't know all the facts yet but suggests, in the context of a much longer, sober answer, that the police might have acted "stupidly." The country goes ballistic, debating the issue ad nauseum because it's summer and something as important as the health care of 300 million Americans really shouldn't dominate the news when people can scream at each other about a bunch of facts that aren't really facts anyway but instead two people's different perceptions of an event.

Obama tries to tone things down. He invites professor and cop to the White House for a beer.
He suggests both might have been a little over the top. (Sounds like a racist to me.) It takes two tries. But he gets things right.

In her Sunday column, Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, summed things up nicely.

As the daughter of a police detective, I always prefer to side with the police. But this time, I'm struggling.

No matter how odd or confrontational Henry Louis Gates Jr. was that afternoon, he should not have been arrested once Sergeant Crowley ascertained that the Harvard professor was in his own home.

President Obama was right the first time, that the encounter had a stupid ending, and the second time, that both Gates and Crowley overreacted. His soothing assessment that two good people got snared in a bad moment seems on target.

I don't know Maureen. Perhaps we should impeach Obama instead of praising him. Or send him back to Kenya.

No, on second thought, let's send Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck to a desert island and let them star in their own reality series. It could be titled "Conspiracy Windbags." The first one to inflate a hot-air balloon with the flatulence emitted from his daily bull dung could get an all-expenses-paid vacation to Whacko, Texas.

No, I believe it's Waco. And the show could throw in a special guide, a surviving member of the Branch Davidians.

Now that would be justice.

It's time, Mr. President, to talk often and talk tough

Things are starting to look shaky for Obama-maniacs.

Today's Washington Post poll reports his support down 8 points from April's 67 percent.
Fewer than 50 percent of Americans support his health care initiatives, The Post reports. (A USA Today poll found that by a margin of 50-44, Americans disapprove of his handling of health care..) And substantially more Americans are intent on "holding the deficit in check" than spending to stimulate the economy.

What is a president who inherited horrendous deficits and a collapsing health care system to do?

To me the answer seems clear: He needs to take off his gloves.

Ironically, Barack Obama's natural bent to be reasonable and conciliatory, to seek out common interest and common ground, serves him much better in an international arena than it ever will in the United States Congress. In Washington, he is dealing with an opposition party that continues to cater more and more to the fringe right. It never has had an iota of interest in bi-partisanship. Nor does it give a hoot about solving the huge and largely intractable problems the country is facing such as health care. No. It wants to keep the wealthy, wealthy; the powerful, powerful, and the public deluded (which, more often than not, a lot of wealth spun through lobbyists and ad men can succeed in doing).

Listen to Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., on health care reform: "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo," he told Politico. "It will break him." Doesn't much sound as though he's looking for common ground.

Look at this wild scene, a forum at which Republican Rep. Mike Castle found himself before a flag-waving woman who first openly challenged the president's citizenry and then forced Castle to lead the overwhelmingly white audience in a Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.

To those folks, I suspect, you're either on "our" side or "their" side -- and if you're the president (read not white), you're automatically on their side. Either these extremists -- and they are just that -- will succeed in kidnapping this country through the venom of their minority views or a majority, led by the president, will manage to marginalize them enough to address some of the vast array of problems Americans face.

Like another president, John F. Kennedy, who in his time also was considered "different," Barack Obama holds the gift of language. He can move millions with his use of it. And as president, he can command a stage whenever he wants it.

It's time for him to remember this, every day if need be. He needs to speak to the American people -- in weekly press conferences, through formal speeches, in town meeting venues around the country. He needs to pummel the frightened conservatives and moderates of his own party by moving the moderates and independents outside Washington to dial their numbers. And he needs to marginalize the know-nothing, do-nothing, tear-down remains of the Republican Party. That, I believe, will be his best chance -- if not only chance -- of moving an agenda -- on health care, on cap and trade regulations for pollution, on a new consumer finance agency and more.

Barack Obama will not succeed as a leader within the Beltway. He has the wrong pedigree.
He was never allowed to join the right clubs. His race remains an obstacle, whether Americans want to make believe they are color blind or not.

Just ask Sonia Sotomayor. Last week, she had to sit through a week of insults in front of the good ole white boys' gallery called the U.S. Senate. Her challenge was to keep quiet, to do no harm, and she succeeded admirably.

Barack Obama's challenge is to lead. And he'll never succeed until he understands the Jim DeMint's of the world for what they are, banner carriers for a United States of America that no longer holds the majority of power outside the Beltway but is still loud and strong enough to dump truck load after truck load of garbage into the middle of the highway.

Sometimes salvation can be found on roads less traveled.